A subset of member nations uses the EU's own currency unit, the euro (sign: €, code: EUR), hence they are called the eurozone. It's one of the most traded currencies in the world, second only to the United States dollar. The economic performance of the eurozone has been dire, with its rate of unemployment actually soaring for years after the 2007-8 global financial crisis while the US and UK were slowly climbing out of recession and creating jobs, and even Europe's supposed economic powerhouse, Germany, performing pretty unimpressively. Don't even ask about Greece, the eurozone's internal debt colony. Some have claimed that this somehow counts as evidence against the eurozone's animating economic philosophy of so-called "fiscal responsibility", which is so fundamental to the eurozone that it has actually been enshrined in treaty.

According to Eurosceptic conspiracy thinkers, a crisis à la the European sovereign debt crisis was not only anticipated but actually secretly welcomed by European policymakers[2] to allow them to push for a European fiscal union that was and remains unpopular with basically all the national electorates of the EU member states. If one pauses to think this scenario through, this would mean risking a major macro-economic meltdown on a scale not seen since the 1930s in order to get a shot at a fiscal union which might, even if it went through, end up as a union of wrecked economies, i.e. like using a nuclear bomb to remove a wasp's nest from your garage, a rather unlikely prospect.

↑Insert the individual Eurosceptic's bugbear of choice here, popular candidates include the Commission (and the larger "eurocracy" of civil servants etc.), the European Parliament (to grab more power from the member states and parliaments), German and/or French politicians (Merkel & Hollande) or any combination of them.